There are, as we all know, multiple endings to Wing Commander IV based on what the player did throughout the campaign and especially his answers at the end of the game.
In a recent geekfest conversation I realized I was the only one who’d ever gotten the ending where Blair ends up leading the Black Lance forces. In fact, people have suggested I’m bullshitting because they can’t find reference to this ending on the internet. Has anyone else seen this?
Yeah, that’s the one where Blair looks all pensive at the end and tells Hawk to send in the Black Lance to blow away the Border Worlds.
It showed up if you listened to Hawk too often.
IIRC it’s mainly keyed by you using the FlashPak early on.
No, it’s definitely in the game. You’ll get it if you use the flashpak to wipe out the large starbase that otherwise blocks your path to your confrontation with Tolywn’s flagship (avoiding a fight). You can also get it if you side in ever other choice with Hawk, as opposed to his “dove” compatriot.
Thanks Charybdis and Desslock. I was confused for a second, since I hardly ever agreed with Hawk.
I hated the FMV ending arguments where you popped in the council meeting at the end of the game. I was pissed that I’d pick the wrong dialogs and would have to redo the whole combat part to comeback to the CSPAN in Space debate.
I hated Blair’s sudden loss of spine when confronting Tolwyn about the fighters. Fair enough, they might not have been painted up in Confed colours, but didn’t he think it was vaguely relevant to mention all the OTHER stuff that they’d been doing?
Thought the debate was a much better way of ending the game than just a big fight though. Even with Seether’s hysterical “I will talk at you for five hours so that you may lock on all of your missiles and blow me up within seconds” boss fight. WC4 was my favourite game of the series, and I’d been playing them from the start.
(WC2 comes second, but there’s only so many times someone can say “Fly out on your own so that you can meet those annoying stealth fighters and have us all call you liars on your return” before wanting to point main guns at the Concordia and send it into a planet)
I was a big fan of WC3. It was the first FMV WC, and I’d just gotten my hot-rod 100mhz pentium (with a quad-speed CD-ROM! Woo!) and speakers. It looked good on that 15" flat-screen monitor…
Seriously, that was the first time I’d seen a game that blended so many neat elements into a big, fun story and game. It was very cool.
WC5 was the only one I never finished. That game was just one big turkey-shoot.
Prophecy was horrible. A million and one variants of “Okay, go shoot out this ship’s engines. No! Don’t just blow it up! That’s the next mission!”, with the raw production talent of Police Academy: The Series. Bleugh. No thanks.
WC3 was cool, but I played it after IV, so it lost loads of its impressive factor.
Random Thoughts:
They should’ve never ended the Terran-Kilrathy war. That puppy could’ve been gold mined for at least 5 more sequels.
Tom Wilson did a superb job in WC3 and 4 (was he in Prophecy? I don’t remember). He was also hilarious behind the scenes on the WC3 bonus disc.
WC1&2 had the best gameplay hands down. Music too.
I would kill for the WC Kilrathy Saga pack and the WC4 DVD edition.
I think WC3 was the best game in the series on all levels – best story, best presentation, best music, best gameplay engine, best acting and best creative vision. It’s one of my favourite games of all time, and right up there with FreeSpace 2, TIE Fighter and the Independence War series as the best games the genre’s produced. The music is my favourite music in a game aside from Star Control 2’s.
Wilson was in Prophecy, and was great again. I actually liked the fact that they ended the Kilrathi war, and tried to create a more morally ambiguous theme in WC4, but it was so heavy-handed it didn’t work well. Some of my favourite moments in the series, however, are the opening scenes/missions of WC4 when Blair is dragged back into action.
I actually liked the fact that they ended the Kilrathi war
Likewise. It had gone on for aeons and I know I was getting bored of Dralthi (officially the Most Explodable Ship Ever Designed By Any Culture Ever by that point). For me, WC4 mostly worked because McDowell was so good as Tolwyn.
Best Story for WC3? I can’t say that, mostly because of the the carbon copy Star Wars ending. Cmon it even featured Mark Hamil fer chrissakes. I also didn’t like how they made Hobbes a traitor. WC2 gave a nice depth to the kilrathy only to have it sprung back into one dimention in WC3.
I also don’t think the engine gave way to such intense combat as the first two games. The different ships, guns and missles meant a lot more in WC1&2. From the weak and fast Hornet to the slow and deadly Raptor to the mammoth capship destroying Broadsword.
Not that I didn’t enjoy WC3, because I liked it very much. There was excellent acting and the gameplay was surprisingly good. (FMV game with Gameplay? who would’ve thought) I just felt that the first two had a better grasp on an exciting and challenging gameplay.
Why I say that the Kilrathy war shouldn’t have ended is because WC 1 and 2 especially layed out a deep groundwork on the different factors between the two. I played through all the secret missions and special ops. It portrayed this seemingly never ending battle between two sides who felt their way was the only way to do things. Battles were won and lost, but the war was never going to end unless a shift in thought occured on both sides. I felt that WC3 took the cheap way out and just blew up the whole planet.
I wanted the death of Prince Thrakkath to cause chaos throughout the Kilrathy royalty. There was hints of betrayal and corruption in the high ranks. I would’ve kept the war going and called WC4: Heir To Kilrath showcasing the internal battle between those who wish to claim the throne and how that would affect Blair and his buddies.
The opening scene in WC4 was excellent however. BTW, if you liked WC3 so much and was glad for the ambiguous theme in WC4, what exactly didn’t you like about 4?
They had to make Hobbes a traitor to morally justify destroying all of the otherwise possibly innocent Kilrathi on their home planet. They retconned the “good” Kilrathi (and then brought them back in WC4 and 5).
The different ships, guns and missles meant a lot more in WC1&2. From the weak and fast Hornet to the slow and deadly Raptor to the mammoth capship destroying Broadsword.
The engine in WC2 was a broken version of the WC1 engine – ships would automatically “hook” onto you, making afterburners irrelevant.
The addition of true 3D space in WC3 made a huge difference. Being able to fly through capital ships, knock off turrets, take out components (the first game to do all of those things, even though they’re standard today).
The opening scene in WC4 was excellent however. BTW, if you liked WC3 so much and was glad for the ambiguous theme in WC4, what exactly didn’t you like about 4?
I thought they mucked up the gameplay engine a bit, with the new texture mapping system that was a real system hog (Prophecy featured exponentially better graphics, and yet was less system demanding than WC4). You also never really got the same sort of feel for the ships, especially the capital ships, that you did in WC3.
But my main complaint with the storyline was that it was very heavy handed – rather than just have a hawkish, ruthless and misguided faction within Confed, Tolwyn and crew were made into a Nazi-esque band of indisputably evil lunatics, complete with nazi chants/symbols and over the top genetic cleansing and bioweapons. Plus they killed Vagabond, somewhat needlessly, and far less effectively than Angel’s fate in WC3.
Making Hobbes a traitor was completely unjustifiable. I was really enjoying WC3 at the end, but making Hobbes a traitor only made sense if you hadn’t played through WC2. And after that WC3 really went downhill; I felt dirty blowing up the Kilrathi homeworld.
Much better to have the war end with the Hobbes faction coming into power on Kilrah, and have WC4 be about secret forces undermining the peace.
Yeah, my two big gripes about WC3 was being unable to prevent Angel’s death and Hobbes being the traitor. I always felt making Cobra the traitor would have been much better and making the end a choice of destroying Kilrah or helping Hobbes take power there. Ah well, still my favorite game series.
There was a vid that was cut out from the relase of WC3 which was sort of an apology from Hobbes that made it a little better, but still I thought it was a slap in the face to all Hobbes fans.
Thanks for the opinions Desslock. I always value your insight.
If you thought Prophecy was bad, how about that free serialized thing that they added later?
“Alright, here’s another mission where they attack the '57 Chevy carrier… GO!”
If you, or anyone else, is interested in seeing that “Hobbes Apology” video, it can be downloaded from wcnews.com, along with about a dozen news clips that didn’t make it into the game either, due to space concerns. The Hobbes clip, at least, made it into the console version of the game.
Re: Secret Ops mentioned by XPav – yeah, it was pretty terrible, although free, so difficult to complain about. I think the idea of purchasing serialized content is something that could really work in computer gaming, but it hasn’t been done well to date. The Secret Ops missions were all almost identical, and none of them were featured any content other than a bunch of ships at waypoints to blow up. It was like a bad fan mod.
Selling professionally made “modules”, replete with new artwork, etc., would work for Neverwinter Nights, for instance, would definitely work.
Selling professionally made “modules”, replete with new artwork, etc., would work for Neverwinter Nights, for instance, would definitely work.
I was sort of hoping this for Morrwind, fleshing out the six provinces and adding lots of new goodness tot he game. I hear Tribunal wasn’t that well-received, however. Now they are doing another. Tribunal, from what I read, didn’t really seem to hit the task of improving the basic game in a substantial way.